The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it will seek to block Oracle Corp.’s $9.4 billion takeover of PeopleSoft Corp.
Assistant Attorney General R. Hewette Pate will now look to the federal courts to for an injunction blocking the hostile takeover deal on the grounds that a merger between the two e-business applications developers is anti-competitive to the software industry.
Oracle launched its bid eight months ago, and it’s come increasingly under fire. In addition to the Justice Department’s investigtion, the European Commission and more than half the U.S. state’s attorney’s generals are investigating the deal.